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vCenter 4.1 install with Update Manager

During the installation of the new vCenter server for the upgrade to 4.1 some issues arise from the ODBC connections to the database.

Firstly, the install must reside on a 64bit server (about time). So I began with an installation of Windows 2008 R2. Once the server OS is built then blank databases need to be created and the connections to the database needs to be established.

To setup the ODBC connections two thoughts need to be considered. vCenter needs a 64bit DSN and Update Manager needs a 32bit DSN, it doesn't matter the database backend but the connection data source does. This is more than inconvenient but different development teams have different time lines so we in the trenches have to contend with the issues. :)

We are running the newer SQL Server 2008 on the site we are working at so the DSN needs to be the native client from a SQL 2008 installation.
1. Just install the native client as part of the SQL server install DVD.
2. Next open your typical ODBC Data Sources from administrative tools.
3. Select "system DSN" tab
4. Click Add
5. Choose "SQL Server Native Client 10.0" and click "Finish"

6. Put the name of the DSN you want displayed (I chose vCenter)
7. Enter the Server name and SQL Server Instance in the "Which Server to connect to" field. Click "Next"
8. I typically use SQL Server Authentication as opposed to the Windows Authentication but that will depend on the company policies for that.
9. Change the default database to your vCenter database that you set up before. (ex. vCenter), click "Next", and then "Finish"
10. Make sure you test your connection settings.

Next steps include setting up the 32-bit DSN, in which the initial steps are not as simple. Firstly, you have to run the 32-bit ODBC manager.
1. This is located %Windir%\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe
2. Repeat steps from before setting up an Update Manager Database and Data source.

Make sure the Databases and Data Sources are setup before you even begin the installation of vCenter and Update Manager.
C

Ever wanted a way to ping an entire subnet and don't have access to a tool to do it? Well this one liner allows that.

The For at the beginning says the variable $i is equal to one, the semicolon separates it from the amount of times the loop is run 1..254 and then the $i++ increments the loop by 1. (You can specify every 5th IP if you want)

The next section runs the windows builtin ping.exe command (make sure you include the .EXE extension) with the switch -n (which means number of times) and then in brackets you are specifying the IP to ping. The where statement at the end is looking for a match of "bytes=32" default output for a successful ping.

I was working with VMware Update Manager and was running a scan on the entire VMguest infrastructure. Well the Update Manager service hung. I am not going to say anything more about that. :)

So I went to the UM server and attempted to restart the service. It sat in stop pending for quite awhile so I decided to kill the process. hmmm how do I do that? I was going to use powershell but the only cmdlet's available are to get- and stop- and restart-. All in the same token as going through the GUI.

Tasklist.exe /SVC
This displays all of the services running and their PID

Taskkill.exe /PID <PID #> /T
This terminates the service and child processes.

This killed the Update Scan on the VIclient and allowed me to restart the service.